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Create a social network or risk everything. That was the original pitch for Google's Facebook rival, Google+, a refrain hammered over and over by the social network's chief architect, Vic Gundotra, in meetings with the company's top brass.

That's how Patrick Pichette, one of Google's highest-ranking executives, led his announcement on Tuesday that he'd be retiring from his role at the company. That line of reasoning has become something of a safe cliché among notable executives leaving their posts.

Feel like getting inspired, motivated or just looking for a feel-good cry? Then look no further. There's no better way to start your day than with a fresh cup of coffee and a nice TED talk to make you feel ready to take on your day.

What do we call me? I’m a 26-year-old writer who lives in a gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn. I’m a straight white man with a single-speed bike and a mustache. I studied liberal arts in college, and I have ideas about stuff, you guys.

We're all for flexibility. Going your own way. Paving your own path. Doing what works for you (and not doing what doesn't). We're also big fans of not putting a timeline on things. We've even said that there are plenty of things you don't have to have by 30 (or 40, or 50, or ever ... ).

On its own, Chrome is a pretty fantastic browser, but extensions increase its potential exponentially. So, what are extensions, exactly? Essentially, they're small programs that add extra functionality to your web browser.

For months leading up to his resignation, Yishan Wong looked beaten down. Employees say he was noticeably stressed and no longer enjoying his work. One business associate who stopped by the office in October thought Yishan was just having a bad day, but the bad day never seemed to end.

Marissa Mayer was running late. This time, it wasn’t for a dinner with skeptical advertisers nor a conference call with her inner circle of Yahoo executives. She was late for a rare meeting with much of the team at Tumblr, nearly two years after acquiring the startup for $1.1 billion.

CUPERTINO, California — In retrospect, it was easy to miss — a bit of combined technology never really seen before in a laptop. Everyone missed it, even those who tore down the ultra-portable MacBook, even those who looked right at it.

The tech sector is booming. If you've used a smartphone or logged on to a computer at least once in the last few years, you've probably noticed this. As a result, coding skills are in high demand, with programming jobs paying significantly more than the average position.

It’s common wisdom. Near gospel really, and not just among young people and founders. Across generational lines, sentiments like those from Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement at Stanford have been engraved into our collective consciousness: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.

We live in an age when we want (and sometimes need) to access information at all times. This includes our own data and files — text documents, photographs, videos, music and more. That's why services like Dropbox and the cloud are so popular with the connected generation.

That's because millennials have created a new rulebook for a variant of written English unique to social media. A rulebook which states that deliberately misspelled words and misused grammar can convey tone, nuance, humour, and even annoyance.

Now that anyone can learn to code, and probably should, web design and development are becoming more and more personal in both approach and learning curves. There's a plethora of ways to tackle web dev and code, and professional designers and developers are no different.

If you've ever wanted to build an app for your business, blog, product or service, but the heavy investment of both time and money put you off, you're not alone. The good news is that entering the mobile market no longer necessarily requires thousands of dollars and months of work.

Newsprint is on life support, emoji are multiplying faster than hungry Gremlins, and 300 million people worldwide strive to make their point in 140 or fewer characters. People don't have the time or the attention span to read any more words than necessary.

Google Drive is here to make your life easy, but we're here to make it even easier. The multifaceted feature that allows you to create documents, photos, spreadsheets, drawings and more has boundless abilities.

When you hear the word "app," you immediately think of those small programs for your smartphone. However, an app is simply any piece of software that serves some kind of purpose, either online, on your computer or another electronic device.

Aaron Shapiro is CEO of Huge, a global digital agency based in Brooklyn, and author of Users Not Customers. He has spent more than a decade as a technology entrepreneur, venture capitalist and management consultant. Jobs in tech are stronger than ever.

Looking for the next great book to sink your teeth into? Look no further. As summer rolls on, you may find yourself with free time to catch up on reading. We have good news for you virtual bookworms — you can get in a good read without spending a dime.

It seems that the whole world is now meditating, which is wonderful news, as meditation does so much for us on all levels: body, mind and spirit. On a physical level, meditation allows the body to stay stress-free.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, freelancer, or manager, there’s no underestimating the power of motivation. Motivation is what energizes, maintains, and controls your behavior against internal and external forces. The type of motivation in different situations can help you excel.

Unraveling the ever-changing World Wide Web to find the very best sites can be a daunting and time consuming task. Or, you could just ask Reddit. Commenters sprang into action posting thousands of comment replies, naming sites that run the gamut from arcane to whimsical.

Jon Negroni spent one year untangling the secret world hidden deep within Pixar films. This thesis (printed in full below) originally appeared on his personal blog and quickly became a viral sensation. Negroni continues to update his post based on interesting feedback from readers.

If you're a programmer, these are good times. Jobs in the segment are projected to grow 8% over the next seven years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. If you're a hotshot coder, you can make up to $300 an hour or more.

Google Chrome is the go-to browser for many, especially those who work on the web. Despite its speed and fluid functionality, we're always looking for shortcuts that can save us time on repetitive or mundane tasks. Fewer copy/pastes or emails each day can make you more efficient in the long-run.

If you've felt the crush of information overload and wanted to get organized, it's time to check out Evernote. The cloud-stored notebook has a strong presence as both a computer and mobile app, along with a web platform, so you can access one organized Evernote account from all kinds of places.

Looking for the next great book to sink your teeth into? Look no further. As the year rolls on, you may find yourself wanting to set aside time to catch up on reading. We have good news for you, digital bookworms — you can get in a good read without spending a dime.

File "less pointless emails" under "things every employee wishes for." Take that, and add "no more waiting around for a response" (and the accompanying internal debate on how long to hold off before following up) and you have a more streamlined and productive work communications system.

Activists meet in the Nam Can forest, wearing masks to hide their identities from one another in case of capture and interrogation. From here in the mangrove swamps of the Mekong Delta, forwarding images to the North was difficult.

Anyone who knows me also knows that I have a huge sweet tooth. I always have. My friend and fellow graduate student Andrew is equally afflicted, and living in Hershey, Pennsylvania — the "Chocolate Capital of the World" — doesn't help either of us. But Andrew is braver than I am.

Whether personal or professional, change is hard. And the cumulative data is not on our side. Take something obviously detrimental, like smoking. A mere 4% to 7% of people successfully quit without the aid of medication or outside help.

Do you have a file on your computer that you want to obliterate? Well, it's going to take a lot more than dragging and dropping it into the little trash can at the corner of your desktop. Your computer's trash bin only removes a file from your desktop.

This article is part of DBA, a new series on Mashable about running a business that features insights from leaders in entrepreneurship, venture capital and management. A lot of people want jobs in marketing, which is great news for those of us currently hiring.

This is a guy who knows a guy, a middleman in the black market for Instagram verification, where anyone from a seasoned publicist to a 22-year-old digital marketer will offer to verify an account—for a price.

There's no shortage of great websites, apps and programs available on the Internet. Some, however, rise above the rest. Your 2014 list of our 11 most useful tools of 2014 covers everything from creating charts to making your computer screen a little easier on the eyes.

So you’ve been considering getting an MBA. It seems like a foolproof plan, right? After all, the MBA is the degree that opens the doors to the world of business. Never mind the two years out of the workforce or that pesky student loan you’ll be paying off for the next 15 years.

Microsoft Word tips? I know what you’re thinking: Is it 1995 again? Am I back in seventh grade? No – we’re definitely squarely in 2016. But that doesn’t mean that Microsoft’s software is a relic of the past. In fact, its Office suite is used by over 1.2 billion people around the world.

You know that you should edit your resume before you send it off in the world, making sure it’s error-free. But to make sure that resume is in the best possible shape? You should really take the editing process a few steps further.

Putting your daily tasks on autopilot isn't just an efficient way to conduct your life: It’s the smart way. We're all triple-taskers nowadays, and it’s sometimes impossible to take a moment to catch your bearings and recall the laundry list of things you have to get done.

When Google Photos launched two years ago, I installed it for one very simple reason: to backup all of my photos and videos to the cloud. It was a second home screen app on my iPhone, not yet worthy of being on my main home screen with Apple Photos.

While Adobe Photoshop is a powerful, creative platform, using plugins can help to extend its capabilities and use it to its full potential. Using an add-on can help you perform tedious or difficult tasks in a more efficient manner, enabling you to spend more time on design.

Gmail has quite a few tricks up its sleeve. The popular email service, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary on April 1, can do more than just send messages. There are shortcuts, customizable options and quick hacks that all users can optimize, as long as they know how to find them.

You've got a busy life. Work, school, social gatherings, family time — there's a lot to pack into one day. Technology is here to save you. While unwinding can sometimes mean putting away the gadgets, there are plenty of ways that a few apps can actually simplify your life.

Google Drive has unlimited potential. The feature that lets users upload documents, images, spreadsheets and more has millions of neat little ways to boost your everyday activity. It's also a useful online warehouse that holds all the things you don't have space for on your computer.

LinkedIn has developed a killer resource of 225 million users, one you absolutely should take advantage of when it comes to your career. But you'll have to navigate LinkedIn's potentially tricky tools and settings while you're at it.

With an endless combination of modern and legacy browsers for users to choose from (depending on their system capabilities), it's our responsibility as designers and developers to ensure the websites we build perform adequately.

Whether you're drafting an homage or a parody, nothing clinches a concept like the perfect font. Many brands, movies and entertainment properties utilize custom typography, but the web has gone to great lengths to capture the art of these letters.

We've all been there — yelling at a computer screen or particular website because the antiquated design prevents you from getting where you want to go. But outdated features on your company's website can do more than annoy — it can cost you potential clients or customers.

Twitter users often make the decision of whether or not to follow someone in seconds, meaning that you have very little time to impress. We looked into why people chose not to follow profiles on Twitter, and crowdsourced a variety of reasons that users give for not hitting that "Follow" button.

Sure, the company released three phones this fall, and like a parent who insists they love all of their children equally, Apple claims that the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and iPhone X are each unique and special in their own way.

I’m a teen living in New York. All of my friends have social networks — Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, etc. Facebook used to be all I could talk about when I was younger. “Mom, I want a Facebook!” and other whining only a mother could put up with.

If there is one universal truth, it’s that everyone is looking to get rich quick. This probably explains why so many people are willing to believe there’s a Nigerian prince out there with their email address, ready and willing to mail them money.

The nine-to-five grind has created a cult of workaholics. Lawyers, consultants and investment bankers pride themselves on putting in 12-hour days, and those of us who can get by working eight hours consider ourselves lucky.

Instagram has become one of the web's most popular platforms for photo and video sharing. To help users integrate the social network even further into their daily lives, it has released a public application programming interface (API).

Whether it's from the car keys in your pocket or an accidental drop, our phones are bound to be victims of scratches and scuffs. But buying a brand-new replacement phone or paying an expensive visit to a professional repair shop aren't your only two solutions.

Spring is here and that can only mean one thing: time to shake yourself out of hibernation and bust out that spring reading. But with so many great books coming out in 2018, it can be hard to figure out just which ones you should pick up.

Spoiler alert: Women watch porn! (Duh.) YouPorn, one of the largest adult video sites, surveyed 24,000 of their female users during a one month period, and the results prove there's no shortage of ladies looking for porn. We know what we're after, and we're not messing around.

We're all on the cusp of something big. For the first time in history, a spacecraft will be able to see the possible cliffs and crags of Pluto up close, revealing a new world to humans who have been waiting patiently for more than nine years back on Earth.

In just a few weeks, the mobile app Flappy Bird became a global phenomenon. It was a simple game, but frustrating and endless. Sharing many similarities with the famous Helicopter Game — only with Super Nintendo-style graphics — it's safe to say Flappy Bird took over the web.

Deleting yourself from the Internet is hard work. First, you have to decide where exactly you want to disappear — from social media sites to retailer databases — and then you have to figure out how you're going to do all that. So attention, web users. This is something you'll want to bookmark.

"Don't use your phone while it's charging," "don't leave it plugged in overnight" and "always let it die completely" — these are just a few popular myths about smartphone batteries. When it comes to battery life, there are many little rules for what you can and can't do with your smartphone.